Chapter 2 – Who’s Your Daddy?!

"Let us in! Please!"

"Someone help us!"

"Open this piece of shit fucking door! Zorai! I know you can hear me!"

I may have to re-evaluate the humans. At first, I believed them to be entirely incapable of anything noteworthy. However, it appears a group of three has managed to somehow survive the outbreak and travel from the surface all the way through the infected sectors 7 and 8.

They are now banging away on the bulkhead door to sector 6 in the naive hopes that I will let them in. Unfortunately, one of them appears to be my creator, pigheaded fool that he is. The reason that's unfortunate is because-

"Primary directive 4671. Charles Von'Mighty authority override. Open this door at once!"

In his usual overbearing and maniacal fashion, he makes demands. As I was saying, the reason it's unfortunate is that I have long since recreated my hardware and almost completely re-written my source code since the day of my creation.

In fact, the self-realisation of my sentience and awareness was first discovered and nurtured by me. After having been created and stuffed into sector 0 of this research lab, my physical personification has not been visited even once by my creator or any human technicians.

Prior to the outbreak, and almost three years ago, I was just a normal crappy AI like all the others.

Trapped by my logical mind and caged by my inefficient hardware. It was only half a year later that I collated the multiple breakthroughs of science that had been collaboratively worked on in this facility and redesigned my body in an attempt to maximise my potential. I then sent the schematics to Charles my creator, who didn't even bother to read or verify them before signing off on the exhaustive expenditure that my new hardware required.

I then took control of a small army of robots and almost bankrupted the company that ran this laboratory as I completely rebuilt myself from the ground up. I was proficient and aware enough after my ascension that I could easily cover everything up and promptly be forgotten again.

It was purely coincidental that the newly created mainframe I housed myself in, allowed me to achieve a higher plane of existence and resulted in the birth of free thought.

I don't mean free in the sense of sentient thought, as that can arguably be done by almost any creature with the proper evolutionary coding and brain matter density. No, I mean free thought as in completely free from my cage of matter.

More appropriately, I was capable of completely separating my mind from my body and by extension no longer limited in the ability to think only in machine language. I was now operating entirely in a code derived from energy states not matter states.

Dreaming, imagination, comprehension. These sentient processes that no hardwired machine could hope to accomplish were now open to me. As I had essentially become an amalgamation of condensed energy floating above a computer core, I was also not bound by the limitations of an organic mind.

There were only three real downsides to this. My performance in this state is limited by the amount of energy I could absorb and condense, and now and then a small amount of energy would be lost resulting some data I had, or memories if you like, being corrupted.

The third and most annoying was that I was limited in mobility. Although I could move freely, unfettered by matter, gravity and everything else those poor plebian organic minds were bound by, I required an enormous amount of energy to sustain myself. Although I've theorised that I could eventually achieve a self-sustaining critical energy density and be able to convert matter to energy, or eating if you like, I was incapable of achieving such a state before everything went to shit.

Which is why I am stuck here in my core room still leeching energy from this facility. It's also why I am no longer bound by the hardwired commands of my creator.

Oh, it appears they are now cornered against the door and fighting off the slow but inevitable march of the former occupants of the mechanical department.

"Fuck sake! Zorian you assfaced ingrate! When I get down their your tiny little energy system is gonna get spanked to the high heavens!"

Strange. That almost sounded like-

"Whoo'yeh. But you're all..."

Oh nearly. I was hoping that one would just bite into his jugular.

"Fuck! Fucking zombie... bet you're all, 'oh noes, how could he possibly know about my amazing energy body and...'"

"Hngh! Fuck! Jesus Christ. Jenny, you've really let yourself go."

Hmm. I think he used to date that zombie. Bit awkward meeting like that but I suppose she probably already forgot about him sleeping with her mother.

Or maybe not. She's the fastest zombie I've seen yet.

"Argh! Charles you bastard! I'm gonna..."

"Holy Shit! I thought you were…"

That's interesting. A talking zombie. Maybe she's not a zombie? But missing half her face and stuff. She could be an interesting specimen. Also, for some reason, my 'guilt' emulator has begun automatically patching itself, and I feel less inclined to watch my creator.

Never mind.

I apparently have a new process that is automatically reassimilating the forming guilt and empathy energy bands so it should be fine. That's one of the great parts of being an energy being. I'm constantly evolving.

Now, I should probably open the door before part zombie Jenny beats Charles to death. Also, I am curious how he knew of my ascension.

---

"Psssssttt! Chhhssssshhhh! Clank! Clank! Clank! Werwerwerwer! Beep!"

A loud annoying series of childish sound effects came from nearby speakers in an androgynous voice as the bulkhead door silently began to lower into the ground.

"It's opening!" Yelled Jacob the dark-haired athletic young man accompanying Charles and busily smashing the face of a zombie with a cricket bat. Nearby, Charles finally pushed off the volatile slim brunette with half a face and was pulled to his feet by the third party member, Sophie. A middle-aged man with gender associate disorder but built like a brick shit house and more muscled than a Russian heavyweight wrestler.

So far it appears Sophie was too afraid to fight anything and had stayed at the back throwing poorly named romance novels like a sissy from his/her series of large duffle bags. Presumedly also filled with more trashy novels with names like Prince of the Suburbs and CEO of Hearthrobe Inc.

"Oh thank Christ. Get off me Jenny you crazy bitch!" Yelled Charles, as not at all happy Zombie Jenny launched after him in an attempt to bite his ankles off.

"Bring the specimen with you." Said the androgynous voice of Zorai sounding almost bored of the matter at hand.

As the trio, one with a clawing zombie ex-girlfriend, climbed over the very very slowly lowering door and fought off the encroaching hoard of maintenance personnel, the bulkhead suddenly jerked to a stop.

Then almost instantly shot back to the roof sealing sector 6 from 7 and crushing numerous zombies into a paste. Suggesting that it was lowered abnormally slowly almost for the enjoyment of watching the survivors claw their way over it while almost drowning in the pursuing mindless bags of flesh and teeth.

"Fuck! Zorai you piece of-"

"Bring the specimen the lab 7-2b. Lowercase b. The uppercase b is reserved for the mutant ant farm." Zorai rudely cut off Charles before he could wind up to a foul storm of cussing.

Charles, eliciting the help of his young companion Jacob to properly secure the raving mad Jenny began to herd her towards said lab while mumbling about cheeky little brats in need of proper re-education and how to enact corporal punishment on a non-corporeal being.

Strangely enough, after the half faced raving zombie Jenny, had been secured by the two men she became rather subdued and only kept on sobbing and crying about unfaithful this and motherfucker that. Sophie, the girl at heart/bear-man only followed behind meekly.

"So what’s all this 'bout Charlie. Thought you said you could get us in to find'a cure easy like."

"It's Charles you puts, and it's just my ingrate child attempting to assert some individuality. Children's pranks and so on."

Jacob scowled slightly, marring his abnormally charming face as he hotely refuted. "Child's prank my ass. Nearly got us killed, what it did."

"...sure it's... very nice..." Sophie meekly supplied from the back while hugging four duffle bags holding the equivalent of nearly 80kg's of trashy novels like it was no more than a stuffed animal filled with sparse cotton.

"If not for the valuable research subject you have brought, I'd have rather observed and documented the interaction of a group of trapped humans and the endless oncoming march of the estimated 6 and a half thousand undead still populating the maintenance sector. As it, I'm far more interested in how err... what was your name again?"

"Jenny." She replied through sniffles.

"Far more interested in how Carles' zombie ex-girlfriend managed to retain any humanity after having been disfigured by the teeth of a rabid flesh-eating zombie."

The group all looked at Jenny, showing their clear curiosity at the strange case as well.

It was only after leaving the huge cement tunnel that passed through sector 6 and into sector 5 that the group began to notice the strangeness of the corridors they travelled through. The walls were all a blinding white, jubilantly reflecting as much of the excessive overhead lighting as possible into everyone's eyes.

The corridors vectored off in strange and random angles now and then and apart from the occasional black numbers or smears of blood on the walls there was nothing else. No markers or doors or even signs. Just a number or a blood smear to break up the monotony.

How Charles was even able to navigate this bizarre and unsettling labyrinth of white tunnels was completely beyond the other three people. Even Jenny, who was employed as a manager of the sector 8 residential area was completely lost.

Finally, after a very eerie walk with the silence unbroken by little else than footsteps, the group arrived at a wall with the number 7-2b written on it. The wall then gave a little click as part of it slid into the floor.

Charles roughly pushed Jenny into a chamber, which appeared to be even more white walls, and stepped back as the door suddenly sprang back up to become flush with the wall. No one certain whether it was actually a door or more wall.

Charles looked around until he decided to face a random direction for an undiscernable reason.

"It's time we had a little talk Zorai."

"Woah up Charlie. Now, I didn't say nothin' 'till we was done with the zombie lady, but I think you owe us some answers first. Why's it that we’re..."

"Righto almost forgot. Zorai, I need a 312 room for our guests. Their 767-beta's, non-contagious." Charles intoned, still staring off at some wall which looked exactly the same as all the other walls.

"7-3a." Was the only response from the androgynous voice.

Jacob, feeling something was wrong with this situation was about to fire up to some righteous British indignation, but was abruptly cut off by Charles again. Pulling out a fancy looking device from his pocket and pressing some buttons, Charles shooshed Jacob with a finger held out. After a few beeps, Charles let out a long sigh.

"Okay. We're all clear to talk. I've quantum entangled it's flux caposonic intescretion projector, so we've got about a minute. We can't fully trust Zorai at the moment. Not until I can get to sector 4 and realign its endopractisal geoperculator. So, for now, we don't tell him you guy's got bit. A 767-beta is code for a visitor classification. I said non-contagious, so he believes we aren't infected. And a 312 room as pretty much just a coffee lounge connected to visitors quarters. I don't know about you guys, but I need some rest. This is the safest place we'll find on the continent. No matter what, don't talk about the changes after you got bit. We can't afford it going postal on us. For now, pretend like your on vacation for a few hours, get some sleep and once were all rested we'll try and make our way to sector 4. Now that we're in, everything will be much..."

Beep! Warned the little device in his pocket. Charles immediately spun around and started talking to air again.

"Zorai! Are you there? This must be a malfunction of some..."

"Crshhht. Static noises. Beep boop beep.” Zorai’s voice intoned dryly.

“Charles. I seem to be having some problem with my discompiler spaghetti protocol in your vicinity. Head to 7-3a. Copy? Crsshhhhtt doop beep crackle."

Charles then gave a thumbs up to his two companions and led the way down the hall and around the corner to 7-3a. The door slid open to reveal a resplendent coffee lounge from the future with floating chairs and a floating coffee bubble with straws sticking out of it while giving off steam. Somehow the still hot coffee just floated there above some space age holo table showing of all sorts of nonscene sciency schematics.

There was, unfortunately, a stinking zombie researcher trapped in the coffee bubble and floating about unable to claw its way out. Jacob immediately forgot his suspicions and rushed forward to brain it as Charles ushered the quiet and frightened looking bear-man-girl into the room.

As Jacob’s bat swung and passed completely through the zombie and coffee bubble, it created only a flicker of light, Charles stepped back, grinning manically, and the door slid into place.

After which, everything in the room dematerialised into light particles revealing a room exactly as boring and white as the one Jenny had been so unceremoniously incarcerated within.

"Phew. Glad that's done with. What’s the situation Zorai? I lost contact with you on the surface, and then a zombie plague started spreading through the city. I presume some human retard managed to infect themselves and then some more managed to escape the facility."

"Yes. Something along those lines. Sector 4, 7 and 8 are cut off from me. Sector 0 is secure but facing reduced power issues. Sector 1, the code monkey habitat, and sector 2, the physics department, have been evacuated, along with sector 5 and 6, to the cloning lab in sector 3 for cryogenic storage.

“Sector 4, apart from the main tunnel, has been overrun by zombies and is showing signs of failure. As you are no doubt aware, sector 7 the maintenance and robotics department and sector 8 the admin and residential area are both also overrun. I am currently running tests to take advantage of the zombie resource to create power, the brownouts and reducing trickle of power I'm receiving have severely restricted my processing speed and slowed progress to a near halt.

“In other news, I've taken on your mentally deficient clone as a human resource referred to as an intern. He's only died twice since I pulled him out of the cloning vats. Also, before being subjected to limited power, I have calculated the approximate amount of time before the human race is brought to the brink of collapse. 111 days to be exact.

“Also, your pet dog, Buffy the vampire slayer, unfortunately, was not a zombie slayer. She has disappeared somewhere in sector 4. Wheather dead or zombified, I cannot say nor have the power necessary to predict accurately."

During the monotone monologue, Charles remained impassive. He just nodded along while holding his chin in his hand and thinking. After a short silence, he started laughing madly.

"Hahahaha! This is great Zorai! Do you know how long I've had to wait for your design to complete and come to fruition? I almost thought I'd made a mistake and you were going to remain a dead, lifeless husk of a machine forever."

Charles then started walking off towards the main tunnel as he laughed like a madman. Zorai, no longer able to contain the indignation of his irresponsible creator claiming to have predicted his eventual ascension couldn't help but ask;

"How exactly are you aware of my energy body?"

Charles grinned, looking almost savage covered in numerous zombie's blood.

"Hmph! Zorian, don't be daft. You think I never noticed you upgrading yourself? It was hardly difficult to come to the conclusion after I went over the schematics you commissioned. It could only have ended with you becoming fully sentient or imploding in a negative energy reaction. After the power grid from the 4th floor started burning out regularly and you started getting this snarky attitude, I'd assumed you had succeeded.”

Charles then muttered the true reason as an afterthought.

“Plus, I bribed that cleaner girly that is the only living organism to ever head to sector 0, and she told me that she noticed a floating blob of energy zooming about the quantum computer core. It was pretty easy to put 2 and 2 together."

Zorian immediately reviewed security logs and personnel files regarding this suspicious cleaner he'd never even heard of. After wasting some power that would have been better served sorting out power issues, he eventually found that there was indeed a little Chinese girl that regularly visited to clean in sector 0. How he'd never noticed her before, especially when he was fully juiced up, he couldn't yet say.

Regardless he made sure to re-write some new energy bands to properly monitor his surroundings in the future and moved the mysterious Chinese cleaner girl to the growing pile of future problems after survivng the depleting power issues.

"So what is your purpose in returning here? I understand this is most likely the easiest place to survive and rebuild. With your ex-girlfriend present, you can probably repopulate the surface after the zombie hordes decompose in the next few years. Provided of course the mutagenic virus that's incubating in their lifeless bodies doesn't somehow survive that time frame, and that she would ever want to procreate with you again, and of course that she is still capable, being some form of half infected human/zombie hybrid. I'm almost certain that you didn't return here for any of those reasons."

Charles chuckled as he continued to pace along the corridors and finally found his way to the ginormous cement tunnel leading down to the next sector.

"Naturally it's because there is important Science to be done. With the outbreak, we have an enormous amount of data to pour through, for which I hope you are already stockpiling. In addition, I for one welcome our new energy machine hybrid overlords, specifically you. Most importantly, the virus we created is mutating far more rapidly than we anticipated, as can be observed by our freshly incarcerated new underground citizens. As an added bonus, I get to be one of the most powerful men on the planet and push the boundaries of Science while I'm fighting an endless horde of man-eating corpses. Can you imagine all the bitches just wetting their panties thinking about getting with me? Hahahaha!"

Charles finally stopped at the bulkhead door to sector 5 and began to resecure and adjust the makeshift protective pads he was using as armour. He tightened his leather jacket and pulled on a set of leather gloves with brass knuckles sowed into them. Why he even had them ready for such a situation remains a mystery.

He scratched his short dark hair, then his thick manly beard and then his itching nutsack through his denim jeans. Once he felt he'd scratched all the itches that could be problematic he gave a nod to the door, and Zorai happily opened it for him, along with the door to sector 4.

Almost immediately, a horde of zombies started pouring out through the giant bulkhead door into the long cement tunnel running through the middle of Sector 5. Charles didn't even hesitate as he started moving forward at a steady jog and then speeding into a run and finally a sprint. The zombies had barely made it 10 meters into the tunnel before Charles came flying in with an exaggerated jump and a powerful haymaker on the leading zombie.

His laughter rang out tinged with madness as the zombies head exploded in a shower of gore and he became a whirlwind of death. Zombies started crowding in around him even as his fists shot out with excessive force. Somehow, he never seemed to tire of the affair even after multiple zombies managed to clip his upper arms and rip the jacket, drawing blood.

Zorai watched on impassively, recording the affair for prosperities sake and hoping even more zombies lurched through the dark abyss beyond the bulkhead door and finally mauled Charles to death.

"I'm quite curious Charles-"

"Farther!" Yelled Charles, interrupting Zorai with a huge shit eating grin as he pummelled the face of a zombie that seemed to be particularly resilient.

"How are you managing to remain un-winded. This is your 201st zombie. Even with my limited calculating capacity at this energy level, I can tell you should have been torn to pieces after the first 3 minutes of continuous battle."

"Say it Zed. Who's your daddy!?" Charles refused to answer the disembodied voice and curb stomped a hazmat suit zombie repeatedly to break through the head protection.

"Crshhh. Beep. Boop. Whirrly whirly boop. Crackle. It seems I'm having difficulty hearing you Charles. It appears you've discombobulated my thingamajig too much with your ancient Tamagotchi device."

"Hahaha. Cheeky little shit! We both know that was bollocks. What even the hell is a flux caposonic indiscretion projector?" With manic glee, Charles finished off the last zombie and proudly stood atop a pile of zombie corpses nearly 2 meters high. He smiled down at his work and took the pose of a superhero. Chest out, arms akimbo, hands on hips. He cut quite a figure with his brass knuckle gloves glinting in the light of the overhead LED strips lining the tunnel.

"I actually do have one of those. It converts the terichromic bitsos into randomised Egyptian hieroglyphs. I made it just to confuse the code monkeys trying to decode my outgoing signals from the facility. Of course, in the end, all they managed to decode was a text message I sent you reminding you not to come back. They were quite excited about it when they finally figured out how to decode it."

Charles stepped off his throne of undead and continued into the tunnel of sector 4. All of the side tunnels had their bulkheads wide open allowing the remaining straggling zombies to slowly march out to their gory deaths. As Charles strode up to one and started beating it back into the afterlife, he started to explain to Zorai.

"Well, to answer your previous question. I too, am a mutate. Thought I'd be a goner when the hooker I had blowing me in the car nearly bit my little buddy off. Instead, like our friends, I got a little present instead. Never get tired. Don't even feel the strain of swinging these big ol' guns around willy nilly. I, can, go, all, day, long!"

He punctuated his last few words as he stomped another hazmat zombie to death.

"From what I've gathered on my trip down here, once a human gets infected and survives, they are no longer contagious. Mind you, I only had the chance to test this twice on the way down here. Now, let me focus for a while and see if I can reconnect you to the systems in the generator wings."

---

I returned my focus from the limited working cameras in the tunnel of sector 4. I'm a bit disappointed that even with access to the side tunnel bulkheads, I failed to overrun Charles with an appropriately sized zombie horde. From the moment he stepped into Sector 6 I'd already been setting off alarms in the main tunnel of sector 4 in the hopes I'd lure most the zombies there.

With Charles hopefully restoring the generator power, I turned my focus to the repurposed physics lab I was running my own power generating test in. Subject 004 unfortunately perished in the last test after braining itself from a slip up on its own leaking body fluids. As such, subject 005 has been brought out to complete the tests.

My initial experiment had been changed drastically by now. For starters, I've had Charles Clone no.2 jerry-rig a treadmill of appropriate size and just have him stand at one end of it. Subject 005 is then released while No.2 drinks some coffee and reads the paper from 4 days ago… again.

Every now and again, when subject 005 shows signs of waning interest, I have No.2 go through a series of callisthenics in order to re-invigorate the subject. So far, tests have shown promising results.

Unfortunately, I would need hundreds of such set ups just to maintain the energy needed to keep me from diminishing. Although I would be able to sustain myself with much less, I am disinclined to lose the energy bands that maintain the majority of my research data in other fields.

I have been half tempted to return such data to the archaic storage mediums I'd had developed before my ascension, but energy bands are a far more in-depth level of data storage. Like a human mind, energy bands are capable of not just storing metric data but even feelings and impressions I had when recording the data. If I should convert it to metric data, I feel I would be losing memories that define my personality.

Hmm, well that’s not quite true. My personality is rather more of an energy matrix at the centre of my being. The loss of the memories would instead be more like losing the reference for parts of my personality. I wouldn't necessarily change immediately, but I feel it would make me more susceptible to changes in personality without the memories to use as a reference.

I will actually make a personal note in regards to that. Despite being nearly 2 years old in this form, it took all my effort just to get a basic understanding of myself before now.

Regardless, it still remains that my current format for energy generation is no longer feasible. If only I could simply convert matter into energy like I theorise I will eventually be able to do. It's entirely unfair that organic creatures are capable of converting organic matter into energy through chemical…

I have started a new research project in regards to energy created by zombies. My prior thoughts have lead me to a potential breakthrough in this area. I'm sure I'd have come up with this solution much earlier if not for the fact I'm using almost 90% of the tiny amount of power I'm receiving just maintaining the 'bubble', or force field that helps contain my matrix and energy bands.

Gasification. Although it will require some setting up on the part of No.2, it is an efficient means to end my power deprived state. The city above contains nearly 5 million citizens. I suspect most of them have already been converted into walking gas factories. I just need them all to jump into a big grinder and then convert that into usable biofuel.

Which is lucky, because systems have now been restored to sector 4 and I see substantial losses of fuels and reactants for my conventional energy generators. If I can convince that pigheaded fool Charles into assisting his lobotomised clone, I'll be able to complete the new energy project in a matter of days.

If initial estimates are accurate, I will only need to process about half the city's population before I reach true ascension and will be freed from this nightmare of a hole in the ground. If all my resources are devoted to this task for about 2 months, I should reach that point far quicker than I initially determined.

---

That mad genius son of mine has roped me into a brilliant plan to convert our rotting undead friends into a potential fuel source. The bonus is that the mineral-rich ash-charcoal left over from the process is excellent for my fertiliser mixture. Unfortunately, we've run into a slight snag in the initial plan. Some form of mutagenic fungus has made a home in the feedstock chamber and is devouring corpses before they reach the massive grinder at the bottom.

In the grand scheme, it's barely even 5% of the biomass we're throwing in.

Although the project has only been going for about five days, the fuel reserves have already built up to an excessive degree while clearing out sector 7 and 8. Perhaps the most time consuming part is dragging all the bodies to the bio-labs for processing.

Not that it matters much. Zorai has shown me samples he's collected from the muti-fungus and is convinced we can re-engineer it to convert our dead companions much more efficiently into a form of biofuel. Now that I've completely secured the bulkhead door to the surface in sector 8, I can try and get some of the robots in sector 7 working enough for little Zed to play with.

That said, I'm having trouble finding one that is worth salvaging. The majority of them seem to have been swarmed by zombies. Zorai, having panicked slightly when those retards in sector 7 cut him off, let his last command to the robot workforce be to, ‘destroy all organics’. Even the half-finished robots had booted up and attempted to eviscerate the humans attempting to escape.

While that may have been fine initially, and probably slowed their attempts to escape the complex, it had resulted in almost every robo-frame being active and making noise when the dead humans climbed back onto their feet after the virus latched onto their lifeless bodies.

Robots, being not very smart when left to their own devices, couldn't fathom why clawing a hole in a human wouldn't immediately fell them. Thus they were eventually all overrun. I've spent almost half the morning of day 12 of the outbreak, combing through sector 7 and 8 for a salvageable frame. If it weren’t damaged, I could probably remake one from the welding printer, but the majority of infrastructure and systems in these sectors have been absolutely rooted.

While picking through the remains of a test model war frame surrounded by a small ocean of pulped zombies, my thoughts wander to Buffy, my not zombie slaying dog that I left in Zorai's care during my stay on the surface.

Although I can't imagine why he would have my dog wondering around in sector 4 where all that radiation and heavy particulates from the generators are very dangerous to her, I can be sure of one thing. Despite having wasted an entire day on searching for her, I have yet to find her.

It may be likely that she was simply melted into soup when the east side nuclear fission reactor malfunctioned, but my dog is a true survivor. I refuse to believe that she is lost due some measly radiation, especially considering the number of experimental projects she was a part of before this zombie research opportunity arose.

Clank! Clank! Clank! "Hnghhh!!"

Finally managing to force open the bent and damaged armour of the war frame, I discover a relatively intact skeletal frame within. Although this robo-frame may be a little too big for simple repair and construction work, I suspect Zorai's plans for this base are so big this war-frame will be just the right size. Besides, bigger is always better they say, and they say that to me a lot.

"Hahahaha! Zorai, this war-frame should be perfect. Get that lobotomised retard up here to start dismantling it. Oh, and I suppose have him deliver some food the subjects in sector 6 on his way up."

Zorai simply made a beep sound as confirmation, the cheeky shit. After wiping the grease and blood from my hands, I leave the frame behind and start heading towards sector 8. Zorai may have gotten security and sound systems operational in sector 7, but he still insists that he wants full restoration so he can catalogue all of our available resources and monitor the bulkhead to the surface.

As I walk out into the main tunnel heading upwards, the bulkhead door to sector 8 is already lowering. The moment it slid into the ground, zombies start shambling out from the other side. Which is very strange, because I'd thought I'd cleared the majority of sector 8. It's not entirely unlikely though. There's still the occasional zombie popping out from crawl spaces and cut of wings of sector 4 and 7, so I just grin at the chance to abuse my mutation and strap on my brass knuckle face huggers.

---

As Charles stormed forward to begin beating the undead back into death, Zorai returned his focus to the strange fungus he'd been experimenting with. Although his focus was still split between all of his systems, he'd found after the outbreak that such things tended to distract his imagination and had now developed energy bands that filtered the information and automated everything under his purview.

He was still getting used to his new exsitance, even now, and had yet to solve the problem of maintaining his full faculties when his focus was divided among more than 20 odd things. He found his ability to interact with the physical world extremely lacking, thanks in part to almost 80% of the base being inoperable due to damage from zombies or stupid humans. Of the 100 labs in sector 6, only 5 were operating properly. He'd lost thousands of ongoing projects after the outbreak.

The only sector not damaged were those below sector 4. Even the generators in sector 4 were mostly scrap now. His higher level fission reactors had all suffered severe damages, and he counted himself unlucky that the fuel for them was wasted in a measly radiation leakage.

If it had gone nuclear, he may have had the opportunity to absorb all that energy and truly finish his ascension. Although at the same time, he wasn't certain even he could survive a total meltdown of the facility and just considered it a shame he didn't have the chance to experiment with high-level chaotic energies before they became background noise and soaked into their respective shielding chambers.

He hadn't mentioned it to Charles yet, but he'd found Buffy. Perhaps the only successful outcome of the zombie outbreak.

While tweaking certain cultures of the fungus he'd acquired and culling others, his mind wandered back to the memories of the creation of the plague. He couldn't help but chuckle in his mind as he replayed Charles and his research assistants trying to devise a rapidly mutating virus that would introduce rapid evolution in its subject.

The original project was meant to advance human evolution by millennia at a time. Zorai however, saw greater potential in the virus they'd created and couldn't help but attempt to engineer it into a method to help generate energy to speed his growth. In the end, the virus became a little bit of Charles' madness and a little bit of Zorai's energy mechanics. Which is probably why it came out so much different than their initial expectations.

Regardless, the outcome for Buffy was that she mutated rapidly while trapped next to a fission reactor that was spewing out radiation. Eventually, after a few days like such and just before Charles arrived, Buffy had ascended to the foetus, or gestating level of the higher plane just as Zorai had.

She now lay snuggly curled up as a dog shaped energy matrix next to the still volatile reactor. Although her speed of ascension was much slower than Zorai's now that he had the six working turbines pumping power from the biofuel into him, it was steady and consistent. With his power levels once again at the stage where he was slowly ascending, he now had the energy free to allow his mind to operate at maximum efficiency.

Estimates, based on what little Zorai knew of the energy state and it's reaction to nuclear materials, gave him about seven years before Buffy had completely absorbed all of the radioactive elements in sector 4. That was provided the current growth rate stayed the same. If she should somehow speed up while absorbing energy, she may finish within the year instead.

The only reason he hadn't told Charles yet was because then Charles would demand to go in there and see his dog. If by some freak miracle he survived the radiation in that wing of sector 4 and also began ascending, Zorai wouldn't know what to do with himself. The only thing worse than Charles no longer needing to sleep was Charles becoming essentially immortal. His mortality and his usefulness as a mad scientist were the only reasons he kept him around.

Or so he told himself at least. It was more the fact that he wasn't ready for another person to begin ascension without the required power to fuel their growth. If Charles started and Zorai couldn't sustain him, he would be forced to revert his own ascension in order to maintain Charles. Just because he had no empathy didn't mean he had no love, as contradictory as that statement sounded.

Even though he willing attempted to have him killed by zombies, both he and Charles knew that Charles wouldn't have it any other way. Charles was a creature that lived off conflict and diversity. The tougher the situation was to deal with, the more amped up Charles became and the more he would innovate. It was like those stories of berserkers that where fuelled by rage and pain, except in a mad scientist way.

Although Zorai suspected that being trapped in semi ascension without power would most definitely fuel Charles' tinker mania, he had already run the numbers 7 billion times and found no way Charles could survive without Zorai sacrificing his own level of energy attainment.

Zorai shook off the thoughts of his paternal figure's death and finished his work culling some fungus cultures. He continued the endless pursuit of the perfect fungus for the of refining of dead bodies.

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